It's over!

What's over? My so-called life (omg do you remember that show? I was really little but I sort of do)? No. My relationship with boyfriend? No. My blog? It seems like it but no. My first quarter of interior architecture school? YES! I was beginning myself to not be sure if I'd make it. The last few weeks were really straining and I was just so emotionally tired and then busy with trying to finish up strong while making trips out to Chicago that I never really got to update the blog regarding my projects. So on my last day of Spring Break (I didn't really get a full week off. I finished last week and got like 3 days off) I vowed to update the blog on my last works while trying to download all my online lectures and what-not.

So this is my first project 5 on pattern. I say first because inevitably I will have to revise it. At this point I was really drained over school and just feeling like I didn't know what I wanted to do. Not feeling super inspired as others. And my first time working with gouache (as well as color for the class in general since everything up til now was black and white, well graphite pencil and black and white). Anyway, so basically the design problem was creating a pattern than would vary to create movement. I had to use a total of 4 colors, each design using only 3 colors. My original design did not pan out and since I was a little bit on a time crunch I just went with overlapping the pattern. My overlaps weren't drastic enough to create an effect and my color palette choice was fairly poor. But since I was on that time crunch again, I didn't have time for a re-do and was just banking on the ability to do a revise.
So after enduring the critique and feeling like a failure (OK i got a B but that was unacceptable to me), I went back and re-did the project using the same concept but varied the size rather than trying to go back to that overlapping thing. So below is the revised design. Sorry all these pictures were taken quickly for my sketchbook and its a little difficult to see the third color in the top design. Anyway, so I went with a purple, blue and gray for the top and yellow, blue and gray for the bottom. Switching the purple for the yellow really makes an impact on brightening the blue and gray which were the same colors up top, but seem different because the yellow is so much brighter/warmer than the purple. So revised mission accomplished (hehe) and I can continue living with an A.


I had similar issues with my Project 6, Four in One tile, which was also my final project. It seemed so easy, but really... not. Ok so the premise of make four different individual tiles, and connect them with a center tile/motif to create on tile that evokes a different design. So my first issue with this one was what the heck do I draw. I had taken inspiration pictures and my sketches were a bit more literal until she said not to be so literal so I kind of went back to this project for inspiration on how to do it. I wish I had learned a bit more from my color mistakes as during my critique, that was really my issue. I had a few ideas while I was actually doing the project and I think I just got a little crazy with trying to use so many different colors and it ruined my project. What I thought would be good color ideas just didn't come through and of course my time crunch was worse this time as I finished my project an hour before class but it needed to be mounted on mat board and then I had to do the write up in my car 20 minutes before class started (hmm some habits never die?). But luckily the design concept was so strong that it got me an A- despite the color choices which weren't horrible, just could have been better. Also, that star motif in the middle probably could have been bigger or maybe just more bolder to connect time stronger. Anyway, the final design:


And now on to my fundamentals class. For the final project we had to choice an architect/interior designer and write a paper on them and present a design inspiration board with a 2 minute speech. I decided to do Dorothy Draper (too bad so did like 6 other girls but that just made it much easier to present since the class had already heard it). She was really fascinating as she was the first person (and woman!) to professionalize interior decorating. She had fabulous style and loved using color and big bold furniture and prints.So below is the presentation board I made. The background is fabric that I thought she would use and the pictures are of hotels she has designed as well as furniture still produced today that she designed. Hopefully I end up with a good grade =)
So I survived my first quarter and I really am proud of myself. This was a really big change for me and something I wasn't too sure I could do. Hope I'm ready for next quarter!

Another Chi-Town Weekend

Actually I'm still in Chicago and won't be back to California until tomorrow night. But since I'm waiting for Boyfriend to come back from work, I figured I'd do a little updating. So boyfriend flew me out for the weekend again, which made me super happy because it's nice to know he misses me enough that he'd fly me out after seeing me last week. The last times I've been out here I usually stay in the city but this time I stayed out in the suburbs since we were planning on furniture shopping and what-not anyway. I was kind of glad because it put me back in the feel of our usual weekends... getting up, getting coffee, running errands, dinner with the fam. All stuff we usually did when he lived back home. So Friday morning my oldest friend, CJ (we've known each other for 20 years!) picked me up and we went to breakfast and a breakfast fav, Sugar Shack in downtown HB. Pretty simple in regards to the food, but always a fav. Sat in the patio and had plenty of girl talk. Then she dropped me off at the airport. The flight was quite interesting to say the least. Usually I don't talk to the people I sit by but the girl in the window seat started the conversation. She's from Chicago visiting and the guy in the middle was from Orange County going to Denver (That was my layover). She was a teen youth pastor and the guy owns a few sports bar and works in vegetation which was the reason for his trip to Denver. After an hour or so of conversation, we found out what he meant by vegetation. The girl asked what he grew and after some hesitation, he let us in on the fact he legally grows weed. You never know who you'll meet on a place... But they were both really nice and had interesting stories to tell. Came in late on Friday night and boyfriend picked me up and off we were to the suburbs. Since I came in late we didn't do too much but I got excited upon seeing a White Castle and begged him to let me stop there to try it. It wasn't too bad. Had the typical burgers and the pulled-pork sandwich that was a little too heavy on the bbq sauce but not horrible. Still can't beat in-n-out. Oh well. Then on Saturday morning, boyfriend and I tried Caribou Coffee which is a chain here. I had some sort of dark chocolate turtle mocha which was heavy sugared. I had my choice of chocolate (white, milk or dark) and went with dark thinking somehow it would be the best type of chocolate to get - the healthier kind? I guess thinking about it at that point it shouldn't matter. But it doesn't seem too bad when I checked the nutrition facts. Anywho, after my sugar intake we started our furniture shopping. Found nothing. The best was IKEA. So sad. After, we took a trip to target and then went to rest at the hotel before dinner with the Fam bam. Then we took his cousin and his gf to the city and got some drinks.
Boyfriend and I...
Boyfriend's cousin and his GF.

We definitely had a great time and I enjoyed getting to know them better since I'm sure I'll be seeing them a lot more now. We got back to the hotel just after 3am and then with daylight savings and all, didn't wake up until noon on Sunday. Then we went to Wildberry for pancakes. It was soo crowded but we waited anyway and it was totally worth it. I do love my breakfast. Nothing super fancy or pretentious so that was nice. Then we continued our furniture search. It was a bit better and I think we've found our options but now we just need to hope everything works out. Then we went to BestBuy and I somehow decided to get a netbook since I've been traveling so much and I hate lugging around my notebook when I'm trying to travel light. I'm gonna keep thinking about it, but it was a good deal and I think I'll end up keeping it. It's my refund present to myself =) But I could use it for shoes instead. =) Then we went to sushi station for dinner and it was ok. I've kind of noticed in the suburbs, asian food isn't too good. There were a lot of people there and prices didn't seem that cheap so you'd think the fish would have been better but it was only ok. Oh and the night before we had asian fusion. It was owned by asian people so you'd think they'd understand how to make asian food... but sadly no. Anywho, it's not like home has a ton of great places either. So the apartment didn't really end up working out. Landlord never mentioned a move-in fee and after he saw boyfriend's credit score, he suddenly mentioned one. Can't be sure there's a correlation but luckily we weren't completely in love with it enough to not walk away. Seems silly since boyfriend travels so much to pay for something he won't really get to enjoy every day. So back to the hunt it is. Too bad. Well I'm back to California tomorrow so perhaps more to post then.

Apartment hunting

So after a little over a month of being in Brazil, boyfriend got to leave a day earlier than planned and arrived at ORD on Friday morning. I left LGB at about 11am and got there at just before 5pm. He picked me up and after figuring out parking near the 'L (Parking in the city costs about $30 a day, while parking in the suburbs but near the trains to the city costs $9. So 3 days of parking = 1 day in the city. No point in paying that much!) we were off to the Loop. Stayed at a boutique hotel that we used Priceline.com for and it was just ok. The loop is fairly expensive and I down-graded my usual to a 3-star stay and I guess I'd say it really was a 3-star stay... sadly. But anyway we spent the entire weekend scouring Lakeview and Lincoln Park for studios since boyfriend travels four out of ever seven weeks ish. We saw a lot of iffy places and places that were ok within our price range. Luckily we found a pretty good space with the only issue being it has carpet and boyfriend prefers wood floors. But it seems he's willing to let go of that because the place is one of the biggest we've seen and in a great neighborhood near what was described as a Whole Foods, but better (We went in and agreed) and really close to little stores and restaurants. We even tried a few and were pleased. 15minute walk to the train and plenty of buses around so it'll be nice. Here's a little peak at the space.It's not that we didn't find decent size studios (well some were horribly tiny) but they just had weird, inefficient layouts and I do not enjoy bad design. So we're waiting to hear back from the landlord on a few questions but I'm really hoping this works out.

So if you're wondering about the sudden decrease in projects for my classes, it's because I've only had one for my design class since and I really struggled with it last week. Spent and entire day working on a design that never happened. Settled with what I thought looked decent on paper and then once painted did not achieve it's intention. And I hated the colors I painted it. I'm re-doing it today actually so hopefully a better post on my project to come. But I'm off to Chicago again this weekend so might be a bit longer before another posts shows up. It's St. Patty's weekend and that should be extra fun in Chicago this weekend! Hopefully we won't be stuck looking at more places and we can go out and have fun!

Monday

In pain

Definitely paying for this weekend's fun today... almost a wasted Sunday but luckily I didn't stop myself from doing a few things. It just wasn't as fun when you're borderline dying... but whatever. More on the weekend and what not tomorrow... when it doesn't hurt to think.

iWANT!

Totally in love with:

Elizabeth and James

Anthropologie

Anthropologie

Week/Weekend Recap

Sadly, I'm dragging myself to do this post. If I'm going to continue to procrastinate writing my paper, I might as well update my blog. I could this as being productive. So to recap my week I finished that design project with the magazine image. Here's the final product:

Not too bad. I was feeling really eh about it going into class. The drive up all I could think about was how much work it needed more and even if I had the time I feel like I couldn't do it. I just had a huge debbie downer moment over it. I was really happy with how some parts went but really unhappy with other parts. The point of the project wasn't to perfectly draw the image but more the get the graphite tones that correspond to the image correctl so that the colored image became a black and white photo (not drawing because those are 2D and we still wanted that 3D quality) which I guess I felt I did for the most part. So before critiques started my classmates were extremely impressed by my art work and even asked if I had art experience which really turned the night around. My critique wasn't too bad and I suppose I fared better than a lot of the class who had fabulous drawings but needed to majorly work on darkening their shading to give areas more of a 3D look, etc. I felt emotionally drained over this project so the rest of the week went really slow.

But last night was pretty much the highlight of my week. Urban Family dinner! Minus boyfriend for the first time. So once a month a few of us get together for dinner. It's always been with boyfriend, his old female dormmate and her boyfriend now fiance (!), his old female roommate, and various other guests we would bring along. Tonight's guest was fiance's friend! He was a fun addition and I hope he comes to more dinners... provided the girlies didn't scare him away. This was my first family dinner without boyfriend and first for the officially engaged couple which mad me a bit sad and made me miss boyfriend that much more. Weekends are hard with him being gone and I somehow manage to sadden myself each week and get just a bit teary-eyed (or more), but I know how important this is for him and want him to be there. Just wish it didn't involve him being in foreign countries, lying on beaches and sightseeing without me. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK? =) Anyway, on to our yummy dinner!
Kimchi pork, side dishes, and sauces galore! So delish!
Cooking the meat ourselves! Korean barbeque may be my most favorite food ever, but it's even better when you're eating with family. Because of the love and joy experienced? Yes, I suppose but really it's because we can then order more things (I'm a horrible person sometimes).

After we decided to do a little drinking at home and that meant also playing some video games so that the boys could have fun too... OK I had fun too (except when I'd lose). =)

Boyfriend's old roommate is one of the most amazing bakers ever! And I'm so glad to know her because then I get yummy treats when I see her. Like these:

Pumpkin scones! So delish. The glaze.. yummmmm and the scone... *drool*. I happen to love scones and these were exceptionally fabulous, very moist (for scones at least)! They even came in the most adorable box too. I'm going to be so fat after this weekend.

What's on the agenda for next week? My fundamentals paper on good design/bad design. Beginning Project 5 for design. I started it a bit since it involves looking for patterns but I will have to a little more work before any sneak previews.

One thing I'm looking forward to are boyfriend's next project is in the states! Things can always change last minute and he doesn't have specific instructions but hopefully they'll land him in norcal and that will be a super easy visit for both of us! Also, his PTO days in April were approved so we'll be in Sonoma one weekend and hopefully somewhere else (but maybe just Chicago) the last week for our 4 year!